Sunday, December 30, 2012

End Radio Silence (also: the Jacobs/Norquist Conundrum)

I'm back. That is, I've been gone. You noticed? No? Nonetheless, I've been squirreled away for three nights at a business traveler hotel in Portland, where they charge a cheapo off-season rate, with the same old everyday risible Internet charge. Which prompted a command decision that the multitudes would just have to do without me for a few day; but it's over. Now, where was I?Actually, I have not the slightest notion where I was, but I can report one fascinating puzzle I picked up from my friend David as we searched for a parking place in and around Portland's Hawthorne Boulevard. David explained that existing zoning laws make way for a fair amount of multi-storey, multi-use construction along the Boulevard, but with no provision for parking?Say what? This in one of America's most planning-conscious cities? Well, yes, but remember the Jane Jacobs principle: if you build it they will come. No, not baseball diamonds, silly, but parking facilities: apparently the good and great decided that if they made it impossible to park, people would ditch their cars.Yeh, well good luck with that. Or more precisely: very likely the denizens of this quintessentially Portland neighborhood do go light on cars and do invest themselves in bikes and Portland's super-convenient (but not cheap) mass transit. On the other hand, it is likely that all but the most committed have at least one car, even if a Prius. And where do they go? Hah, you guessed it: into the back streets, where you can so often see people creeping along like predators, only in this case just looking for a place to dump the wheels.So, not as simple as that. But then I thought of the foil for honest Jane: Grover ("starve the beast") Norquist, who famously held that if you cut off the government's allowance. Conscientious liberals have always thought that Grover's principle doesn't pass the giggle test--but aren't Jane and Grover saying the same thing? If she is so manifestly right, can he be obviously wrong? Or (the horror) could it be that there is some merit in what Grover said after all?Afterthought: one corollary of Portland's high bike-to-people ratio--superb, febrile, baroque bike lighting. You see stuff that glares, glows and blinks from virtually every part of the pedaler's vehicle and even his costume.

The residents are happy to save $5,400 a year in rent alone. If that inconveniences out-of-town drivers--in the same manner as, say, Cambridge, MA's neighborhood permits, or NYC's random fake fire hydrants--so be it.